Hey all!

I'm keeping this online journal type deal for class, but I wanted to send you all the link so you'd know what we were up to. Leave messages!

We finally got here, obviously. After staying up for three whole nights in a row saying goodbye to people and doing panicked packing (thank you, Meredith), I slept through my whole plane ride, missed my flight in Paris, ate an entire box of cookies, fell asleep again, slept through my flight to Rome, and finally got off the plane in the middle of five thousand screaming Italians. I was sort of disoriented and tired, obviously, so I decided to order my first 'real' Italian coffee in Fiumicino airport. Bad idea. I ordered a 'special' cherry coffee, which apparently consists of a tiny bit of the strongest coffee known to mankind, a bigger bit of the strongest cherry vodka known to mankind, and ten pounds of whipped cream. This whole combination didn't mesh well with the ten million doses of dramamine I had taken on the plane, and, surprise surprise, I fell asleep on top of my luggage in the baggage claim for a while. Somehow, Vicky and I found each other, and managed to drag our three suitcases up ten thousand flights of stairs, through the subway, and down a cobblestone street to our hostel.

This was really where the problems ended though, to be honest. Our hostel is amazing. We are sharing our room with about 12 of the nicest people I have ever met, all from different countries - Germany, England, Honduras, The Netherlands, Turkey, even one from Northeastern (ha). Though all these people are students, they're all ridiculously mature, friendly, intelligent. Everyone has taken the initiative to travel through Europe - a lot of them alone, which takes a lot of courage - and are all just looking for people to share ideas with and see things with. We haven't had any problems with stealing or rude people or anything, and we've made awesome friends with the people in our room, especially two girls from Germany and Honduras that we've been traveling around with. It's clean here, and everyone sits up at night and eats bread and nutella and talks about things. It's great.

Anyway, enough about the hostel. I love it, you get the point. We've been seeing a lot of things. Yesterday was a religious holiday, so everything was closed, but we took a walk and somehow managed to run into every famous monument you have ever heard of within a few hours. Also, all the Italians are on holiday, so it is all tourists, which is kind of weird but hilarious at the same time. Lots of fannypacks and fat Americans on cruises. The best thing was the Coloseum. I don't care if it's touristy, ridiculous, expensive.

The great thing about the Coloseum is the way you find it. You walk out of the metro door and all of a sudden, it's all over the sky. There are only a few things I've ever seen that have made me feel as though the ground has fallen out from beneath me, and it was one of them. It makes every skyscraper I have ever seen look stupid. The whole thing is absolutely perfectly built, sturdy stone, arches everywhere, and when the light comes through it it looks so awesome but still so completely real, and you can't imagine how anyone could have ever come up with such a thing. Taking a tour of it was definitely worth it for the information (learned lots of gruesome things about the ONE MILLION PEOPLE who died in the circuses there), but listening to those headphones and walking in a pack took away from the effect a bit, so I think we're going to go at Vatican City on our own tomorrow without a guide. It was absolutely more amazing than I thought it would be though - definitely one of the greatest thingsI have ever seen. The Trevi Fountain was amazing too, really pretty and peaceful. The cool thing about the fountains in Rome is that they are all made of white marble and are perfectly preserved, so the water runs light aqua through them and looks really pretty. You can also drink out of all of them, which is nice for us, because we keep running out of money and having to walk home and stuff, and it's pretty hot here. We took a bus tour, saw the Circus Maximus and the homes of the emperors, the tower where Nero played his fiddle while Rome burned down, St. Peter's, Mussolini's palace, and this giant white building that I think was called the Vittorio that was incredible. There's a lot to know, and only a little time to learn it. Also, I got a fake Prada bag for 10 euro, bargained down from 50. I rule.

We're eating bread and nutella to save money, and that's it. But they do have WINE JUICE BOXES here ( I am NOT KIDDING YOU), which coincidentally are cheaper than water..hmm. But we only had them walking around on tours, and a little at a time - no worries, Mom. It makes the monuments that much more interesting. Actually, we haven't really gone out at night very much. Rome doesn't seem to be all that happening of a place after dark, which is okay because we're tired anyway.

Side note - I had my first European chocolate, gelato, cookies, cappuccino (and then a few more...addiction), pizza, panini, and foccaccia. The food is RIDICULOUS here. I have not actually stopped eating since I got off the plane. I will weigh 400 pounds by the time I get home. FYI.

So anyway, bedtime. Tomorrow we'll be in Vatican City. Saturday we are thinking Florence, then Sunday is our last day in Rome before we head to Venice.

I'm glad I came here. I've been feeling really homesick, actually - I miss things, people. Things were really great before I left, but I know I should be here, and actually, I've felt at home from the minute I was on my way here. I guess a person should feel lucky when they feel at home in more than one place.

Europe is interesting, too. I guess you could argue this, but it looks like the first society where men really ever tried to reach for perfection. You can see it in the art, in the sheer size of things here. When you see these great buildings crumbling down, when you see all the holes in the Coloseum where peasants stole pieces to build their houses and the columns toppled over with people using them as benches, it's upsetting. But you can still feel the glory that was there, the dream that made people conceive of these things in the first place. It's the same sort of feeling that made the Greeks build what they built, that made early Americans build what they built. I guess I'm explaining it badly, but there's a real sort of glory feeling here - even if it's lost, you can still feel it in the air. You can feel it when you rub your hand along the walls of the monuments, even if everything is turning to dust underneath your hands.

Of course, you also can't flush toilet paper in Europe, which is pretty terrible, so I will probably not live here for life.

None of this makes any sense. I am exhausted and sunburnt and delirious. Goodnight - I miss all of you!